Circular
by intastella burst
Summary: Growth is a tricky thing. The Pevensies should know. Written for a "circle" prompt. One-shot.


We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present.

-Anais Nin

* * *

Susan has always wanted fine things, always possessing some intangible certainty that everything will be all right when she has them.

The wanting is so much worse when you know what having is like.

* * *

Lucy never doubts the truth, not for a second.

But sometimes she wishes that she could. She wishes that she could dismiss it all, as the other children at her school dismiss Father Christmas as a silly child's fable--but she knows that _he_ is real, too, and there is no refuge in skepticism.

She sees the truth everywhere, in the way Peter's hair glimmers like gold when the sun catches it at the right angle, in the thin, white, nearly-invisible scars on Edmund's skin, in the preternatural unconsciously-regal grace that directs the every move of Susan's arms and legs (that those legs have ink traced up their backs in cheap imitation of stockings doesn't matter). She sees it all, and she cries for the millions who do not.

Edmund's pajama-covered shoulder, though skinnier than she remembers, is still a lovely place to sniffle and wipe her face on.

She supposes that some things never change, even when you hold the key to the universe in your heart.

She doesn't know if that's comforting or not.

* * *

The top spins _whirr-whirrr, _a miniature sphere whirling its merry haphazard way in uneven, wobbly circles on Edmund's desk. It almost topples, and he catches it, fingers closing protectively over the smooth wood, in the moment before it collapses.

* * *

Peter catches Lucy up in his arms and waltzes because her dress is yellow and so pretty, one-two-three, one-two-_ouch_, _you stepped on my toes,_ and the room turns around and around. Her vision is lopsided and for a moment Lucy is flying, light--

Peter sets her down after one last grandiose twirl, and the floor beneath her bare feet is so hard and splintery.

* * *

Susan cannot bring herself to look in the mirror for weeks after they return.

She cannot bear to look, because if she does she will see what she has lost, and she would rather be blind.

So Lu plaits her hair for her, and Peter dabs at the spot on her chin, and Ed loses at checkers to be nice. Their sympathetic faces are the only mirrors that she needs.

She would rather ignore the double heartbeats that she knows pulse in her siblings' chests as well as her own than face the music (_ka-thump, ka-thump_, _such a pretty song_). She's never been able to carry a tune without the sheet music, after all.

It is in the nighttime that she can ignore it no longer. She lies flat on her itchy sheets and listens to Lucy's sweetly even breathing. And she feels it tugging at her: a great nameless stirring, snaking into her mind, sinuously twisting into her dreams and lying to her, _lying_, it is all a terrible, vicious lie, because no truth could be so beautiful, and her face is hot with babyish tears--

But, oh! Once, the sheets were silk.

* * *

Edmund has always been a skillful liar, and for once this seems like a good thing.

He learned why deceit was a vice in Narnia, and now he becomes reacquainted with its virtues. It's as if he's learned nothing at all, as if nothing has changed since the day the wardrobe door slammed shut behind him. Only his reasons for lying are different.

He lies to Peter and willfully lets his brother trounce him at chess, not once, but three times (but not four, because that would be excessive, and suspicious even to trusting Peter).

He lies to Susan and tells her that Yes, she looks as pretty as _ever_ (there is a quiet gratitude in Susan's eyes as he emphasizes that last word), even though her lips are really far too red and her hem too short.

He lies to Lucy and reassures her that _of course_ he thinks they will get back some day, and _of course_ Aslan was right to send them back to England. Of course Lucy believes every word.

He lies to himself and excuses his falsehoods as necessary kindnesses, even though he knows they are not necessary, and in the long run certainly not kind.

He thinks Jadis would've been proud.

* * *

Peter twirls his pen between his thumb and his index finger. Ink glubs out unevenly, blotting his snowy white paper like chemical tears or fat drops of poisoned blood.

He's ridiculously morbid for one so young.

He wonders if it was better when the ink was only ink, when it didn't pull up ghastly bloody mental images that are worse than imaginary because they are memory, when his heart was still pure and unsoiled by loss.

Either way, his paper is ruined.

Peter stabs the paper a little too emphatically, and ink splotches and stains his pale, soft , too-small fingers. He pushes his chair back and decides to ask Ed about a rematch.

* * *

Susan used to hate boys (other boys, you understand, not her brothers, not usually) because she was awkward and wrong-looking, and they laughed at her behind her back, cat-calling and giggling at her bony elbows and too-full mouth and long, tangly dark hair.

Now she hates them because she is beautiful (never as beautiful as before, but they don't know that), and they notice it, the way her neck is slender and creamy and her hair curls in tendrils at the nape. She's always been a very _visible _person, and now more than ever she doesn't want to be seen.

But she still wants to be beautiful. She always, always wants to be beautiful.

The looking-glass by the door in Peter's room shatters as she sleepily meanders out early one dim muggy morning (all night she sat on his quilt, which was not scratchy, and they conjugated Latin verbs_--amo, amas, amat, amabo te--_because neither of them could sleep). He flinches at the noise--mustn't wake the children--but he says he understands, accidents happen.

She just picks up the pieces in silence, and doesn't flinch when the sharp edges draw blood.

* * *

Lucy is cold, and the tea is hot. Edmund's added far too much sugar, as usual, but that's all right, because the heat cuts straight to her frozen bones and she can barely taste the liquid. She cradles the cup in her hands, and they tremble with the December chill.

Edmund seems to look at the snowy icicles growing in Lucy's hair as personal insults every one, and his mouth is set as he methodically towels her fair head dry.

Lucy frowns, too, because she knows why he is so uptight, so protective, almost motherly--he reminds her of Susan, actually, in that moment, because he too is trying to block out memories that cause more pain than pleasure.

She sets the cup down with an audible clink of china, and the liquid splashes over onto Edmund's shaking hand. She pulls him up by his collar, and pushes him, protesting and laughing in that high, my-voice-isn't-quite-broken-yet way that boys have, to the door. And they are outside, snowballs and snow forts, snow wet and melting down their necks, and neither of them spares a thought for silly things like tea and towels.

They're just two children playing in the snow, and it seems that they always have been and always will be.

_If you were to blink the years between could pass you by.  
_

Nothing's changed, not really.


End file.
